YA Review: The House on Hackman Hill by Joan Lowery Nixon (1985, Scholastic)

Two weeks ago, I read and reviewed Joan Lowery Nixon's Haunted Island. Really I should say that I re-read it, since it scared the daylights out of me as a kid and three decades had gone by between my first encounter with it and that particular Thursday. I enjoyed it enough that when another one of Nixon's young adult horror fares crossed my path, I wanted to give it a chance. Thus, on this cold and frosty Wednesday morning, snuggled under the covers, the time seemed right, and I took a journey to The House on Hackman's Hill.

The main question I had going into the story was if I could enjoy this one as much as Haunted Island. After all, I have no memories or experiences to ignite any nostalgic fires about this one, and while it's clearly meant to spook children, I routinely devour more adult horror offerings with nary a nightmare in sight. Nixon's a good author, but did she have what it takes to entice me into enjoying a fifth-grade level young adult mystery?

Spoiler alert: yes, she absolutely does.

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Nixon uses much the same literary technique to set the scene in this one as she does in Haunted Island. Two children, a boy and a girl, are regaled by an older man with a scary event that took place during his childhood. In Haunted Island, it was a natural disaster, a vanished person, and a missing bag of silver coins. With Hackman's Hill, it's an ancient Egyptian curse, a vanished eccentric, and a stolen mummy with a reward for its recovery. Even though it's a formula, I can forgive Nixon for using it, since it's quite effective in communicating the back-story and enticing our leads into action.

Our leads, in this case, are Debbie and Jeff, cousins who are on spring break and in search of excitement. No state or region of the country is specified, but given the place they're staying sees cold weather and a freak snow storm during "Spring Break", I'm going to guess they're in the New England area and not, say California. The twelve-year olds are drawn to the mysterious abandoned mansion house of the title by curiosity, and while Grandma and Grandpa don't seem keen on answering questions, kindly old neighbor Mr. Karstan is only too happy to bend their ears for a while.

Karstan himself lived in the house as a boy for a short time--after his father's death, his mother was taken on as an assistant to Dr. Hackman, a man whose life's ambition was to convert his ancient house into a museum. Hackman was interested in pieces of antiquity, and for him, nothing beat out the mythology and glamour of ancient Egypt. Hackman, in fact, was so taken in with Egyptian culture that he didn't always procure his artifacts in ways that were either ethical or legal. Take mummies for instance: the Egyptian government bans the export of mummies, and the US has laws against the personal ownership of artifacts from other cultures, but as Jeff and Debbie learn, there's a way around every law if you have enough prestige, money, or guile. Hackman, apparently, had all three of these.

While a boy, Karstan witnessed the delivery of a real, authentic, wrapped-in-bandages mummy to Hackman's house. Later on, as he tells the children, a series of spooky events and accidents sent him and his mother fleeing from the house, never to return. Dr. Hackman always boasted about not believing in curses befalling people who plundered Egyptian tombs, but Karstan knows what he saw and heard during his short time living in Hackman's home, and his story is meant as a warning to keep Jeff and Debbie away from the place.

Unfortunately, Karstan makes a mistake: he mentions that while police investigated the home after Dr. Hackman's disappearance, they never found the mummy, and there's a standing reward of $10,000 for anyone who returns it to the authorities. All of a sudden, a story about paranormal happenings and Egyptian curses has dollar signs flashing in the cousins' eyes. Jeff's father is out of work, and $5,000 would go a long way towards helping the family financially, while Debbie's amateur photography hobby could take on a more professional look if she could buy a truly nice camera to replace her cheap insta-print model. And that settles it: back at their grandparents' place, the pair decide they'll solve the mystery of Dr. Hackman and his missing mummy before Spring Break is over. Packing a couple of sandwiches, flashlights, extra batteries, and a few homemade cookies, the pair head up to the abandoned house first thing in the morning.

The house is spooky enough as it is, but when a freak snowstorm swirls into the area, the pair realize they're stuck in the dark mansion with its bizarre and twisted galleries of artifacts until the blizzard blows over. What's worse, they are definitely not alone. Was Old Mr. Karstan's story about mummies and Egyptian curses true, or did someone have the same idea they did to explore the house? With no choice but to press on in their explorations, solving riddles and uncovering hidden passages, the pair's overnight stay in Hackman's house may turn into the spring break they'll never forget...for all the wrong reasons.

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Nixon's writing here, just like in Haunted Island, is the perfect level and tone for the ten-and-up crowd. While the story itself is relatively unsophisticated by adult standards, I have no problem at all admitting this would have left me good and spooked had I read it as a child--these kids are a hell of a lot braver than I was at their age, that's for sure.

One of the things I loved was the way Nixon handles the relationship between Debbie and Jeff. They're partners in this venture, equals, and while they each handle the frights in their own way, it's nice to see a story where the female isn't just the damsel in distress or a whiny brat the boy needs to constantly rescue. In one particular scene, the pair are trying to decide who should go first when ascending a staircase, and Debbie volunteers to go first. Not because she's particularly eager to confront danger head-on, but more because she can't stand the idea of something creeping up behind her, a thought which Jeff wishes she hadn't voiced now that he's the one bringing up the rear. I laughed. :)

Most of the book's scares have rational explanations, but be aware that, like Haunted Island, Nixon's playing straight with the paranormal: there really was a mummy, there really is a curse, and this isn't a Scooby-Doo story where the ghost at the end is unmasked as some ornery, cantankerous scallywag. Anubis walks, and even though seven decades have passed between the time Hackman imported/stole the mummy and the cousins enter the abandoned house, a curse that has festered for millennia views seventy years as a blink of an eye. The danger is real, even if it sometimes seems a bit mentally deficient. Powerful gods of death should not be deterred by simple locked doors. The ending is also somewhat bittersweet, leaving a few questions left unanswered, but I honestly don't see how Nixon could have finished the story otherwise, and it's at least sensible if you can read between the lines.

Like Haunted Island, this is very much worth reading if you enjoy lighter young adult fare with a hint of horror and excitement. Between the two, I think Haunted Island does it better, but Hackman's Hill is no slouch, and if this sort of thing is what you're looking for, copies are certainly inexpensive enough and easy to find. Scholastic reprinted this one in 2001, so you aren't stuck looking for the original 1985 printing. They also updated the cover artwork, and thankfully it's much better than the godawful Haunted Island reprint artwork was:

That said, while it isn't a bad cover, it's still not as interesting as the original cover from the 1980's. That may just be the nostalgia for those old Apple Paperback cover artworks talking though. Let me know what you think.

And, hey, as an extra special bonus, enjoy this fun little one-minute trailer cut together by a group of 5th graders as their class project from November of last year. I think they did a bang-up job, so give them a watch and a like:

Note: the author of this review assumes no responsibility for readers who decide they now want to go exploring spooky old mansions in search of Egyptian artifacts as a result of learning about this book. Be smart, stay alive, and don't trespass on other people's property. :)